Free mind helps Fukada create Japanese Winter Games history

After falling on the first of her three runs at Livigno Snow Park on Wednesday, it was difficult to imagine what was about to come in a discipline in which she has only one World Cup win.

But having set the standard with her second run, Fukada further improved her score with a flowing final effort to claim the title, a win that allowed her to shake off her disappointment from finishing ninth in the big air earlier in the games.

“I used to think too much after a bit of a mistake,” she said. “This time, I tried to take it as not something serious and instead thought I still have a chance.”

After the big air failure, Fukada, labeled by her coach Yasuhiro Sato as a “perfectionist,” realized that watching replays, visualizing and spending too much time dwelling on the past were all habits she could change.

Unlike in the big air, in which she could focus on sharpening specific techniques, Fukada tended to become hyper-focused on her errors in slopestyle and let them impact her performance in the following sections.

After many struggles and much training in the discipline, the big air blow served as a catalyst that helped her win slopestyle gold, proving she is heading in the right direction.

“I can’t believe it,” she said of winning the gold medal. “I could feel the weight of it the moment I had it around my neck, and I was thankful for my career with the people around me.”

“I believe the difficulty level of skills will be higher (in four years). I’ll train hard to improve, and get good results in both the big air and slopestyle.”